


Lindemann's Inferno

by Frankieteardrop



Category: Rammstein
Genre: Dante's Inferno inspired, Explicit Sexual Content, Living vicariously through Richard Kruspe, M/M, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-10
Updated: 2016-02-07
Packaged: 2018-04-25 17:42:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 22,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4970290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frankieteardrop/pseuds/Frankieteardrop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Maybe you shouldn’t interrupt him, Richard.  You know he hates being interrupted when he’s reading.  He doesn’t get much opportunity to sit by himself and read, you know this.  He’s always surrounded by other people.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Limbo

It’s very strange being in this limbo state of a relationship. In which you aren’t entirely sure where you stand with the object of your affections. He’s this stoic, menacing creature with the softest soul you’ve ever encountered, but you’re not entirely sure what’s happening in this fucked up relationship because nothing has actually happened and no one has actually spoken about anything. But you know there’s something there, and it is something, because you’re not sure what it is but it’s _something_.

From your position on the left of the stage, you get a clear view of pretty much everything he does. From where you stand, or dance, or move around, you can see every inch of him moving too, his actions all the more impressive from this close and you relish the fact that you’re up here with him on this stage and not down there in the sea of faces that he doesn’t know. He is tall; not as tall as Oliver, but taller than you (even if it is just a couple of inches). He’s dark in his features, but he hasn’t always been; there was that time when his hair was mostly grey and fairly long and you loved when he’s allow you to style it because it felt like the most intimate thing in the world. But his features are quite dark, and that kind of adds to the mystery of Till Lindemann. But those eyes, mein Gott they are beautiful; glassy pools of sea green to fall into and get lost in. But it’s the weirdest physical attributes that draw you to him. His broad shoulders and chest from his days as a swimmer; his strong hands which can be so punishing yet so delicate all at once; even down to his teeth. Yes, you’re aware that liking someone’s teeth is weird, but he has a particularly nice set that aren’t American White and perfectly straight, but are him. They define him. But to be fair to you, there isn’t really anything considered weird when you’re in this band. Surely it’s time Rammstein were crowned the Kings of Weird, right? You’re certain this accolade must be coming.

But there’s something much deeper that draws you into Till Lindemann. His gravitas on stage is matched wholly by his presence behind the scenes. He’s an introvert; you know this. Once a friend to him and it’s like the flood gates open. He’s so much more than what the fans know of him. He’s so much more than this presence on the stage and you’re one of the few in his circle that’s privileged to know him. Firstly, Till Lindemann is one of the funniest human beings you know. Humour has always been something which has made you like a person, but you’ve never laughed so side-splittingly hard as when you’re with Till. And you know that if you’re feeling particularly down for whatever reason, Till is the person who’s always been there to help pick you back up again. And it’s that fierce loyalty to his friends and loved ones which turned you onto him. He’s always put others feelings and emotions before his own, sometimes when he could really do with the contrary, but you know that Till needs to be needed. And his words. You’ve never known a human being to command language the way Till does. There aren’t many people who can write poetry in one language and have it translate almost perfectly into several others. And his understanding of human emotion runs deeper than anyone you’ve ever known. He understands the darkest thoughts in your mind better than anyone. What are you to do? He just gets you.

But things have happened between the two of you which are so much more than friendship but in the most subtle way. The way he looks at you has changed over the last decade. From the time you first met him till now, you’re certain that he feels something more than friendship for you. The protective touches he bestows upon you; a hand on your shoulder or your hip, gripping your wrist softly when he wants your attention instead of calling your name, the way he looks at you more deeply than anyone else. You’re sure that the way you feel about him changes the perception of the way he looks at you, and you begin to notice things that might not necessarily be there, but you’re sure. You’re sure enough in yourself that something is happening between the two of you and you’re almost desperate for something to come of it. 

But there’s always an element of doubt in your mind, isn’t there Richard. I mean, you’ve seen him bundling off with a gaggle of giggling girls back to a seedy hotel room (the cheapest management could find, you’re sure) and you know they’re not going back to play cards. You’ve heard it, you’ve seen it, you know what he’s doing so you’re unsure as to whether what he actually feels for you is real or all in your head because ultimately you could just be imagining everything. Even down to the way he interacts with other band members; the attention that others get while he’s on stage with them and you find yourself actually jealous of that attention. You want it all for yourself, but that niggling voice in the back of your head is constantly going, constantly chirping away telling you that you’re imagining these feelings despite evidence to the contrary. 

But whenever you feel yourself building the courage to talk to him about this, something will step in your way. A person will drag you away to talk, or he will be taken for photos or fans, or even just a thought in your head tells you not to, leave him alone, he doesn’t need this now. But you need to speak with him. You’re desperate to know. You need him to tell you how he feels. 

You watch him for a moment, sitting in a large leather armchair by the fire in the lobby of your hotel (finally, a nice one chosen by management. Even if you’ve already spotted eight cockroaches in an hour). You approach him, seeing the small book sitting in his right hand, his left hand pushing his hair back from his face as he reads. Maybe you shouldn’t interrupt him, Richard. You know he hates being interrupted when he’s reading. He doesn’t get much opportunity to sit by himself and read, you know this. He’s always surrounded by other people. But this is possibly the most important conversation you’ve ever had with the man. Maybe that’s a pass for interrupting; to find out whether this is unrequited love or not.

You take a seat in the equally large armchair opposite and feel dwarfed by it. You sink into the warm, soft leather, but this setting seems to perfectly suit him.

“Are you okay Richard?!” he asks you, closing his book for a moment, “You look like we’re losing you in that chair.”

“I didn’t expect them to be so soft,” you laugh awkwardly, settling yourself into a comfortable position. 

“I need to get some of these for home. They’re the most comfortable chairs I’ve sat in in a long time. And I also need to get a massive fireplace now that there’s no children around to throw themselves into the fire.” He laughs, pushing his book back into his bag. He doesn’t seem too upset at your unintended interruption, so you might be okay to push ahead with this conversation.

“Listen, Till, I need to talk to you about something,” you offer, leaning forward, a little closer. “I need to ask you a question.”

“Oh? Go ahea-…” he stops, turning to look at the noise erupting behind us, as Schneider and Paul come to join us, both evidently already drunk. 

“Till, Richard, we just found the literal best bar in the world. You two have to come with us right now!” Schneider tells us, and you watch a smile stretch across Till’s face, indicating to you that he thinks it’s a good idea to go with them. 

“Good beer then?”

“The best, Till, the nectar of the gods, Dietrich!” Paul announces, “Let’s go! Quickly, before it turns out we imagined it!”

Till looks towards you and offers an apologetic smile, helping you out of the plush armchair. “We’ll continue this later, yes?” he nudges you with his elbow, walking close to you.

“It’s fine, it’s nothing…” You say, chalking it up to experience. Maybe it’d be best to catch him when he’s on his own in his hotel room or something? But you know you cannot continue to live in this limbo state. You need to know either way, is he in love with you or not?


	2. Lust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Bloody Landers, that fucking alcoholic. I swear to God that man has hollow legs.” You laugh, gripping onto his arm to steady yourself as you cross the threshold to the hotel._
> 
>  
> 
> _“How he drinks us all under the table is a mystery to the world. I’m convinced he’s actually a robot. There’s no way he drank all that beer. He must have been tipping it away.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **NOTICE:** This is literally 2000 words of pure smut so please skip this if you need to. Please don't suffer it if you don't have to.

“So, what did you want to talk to me about earlier?”

“Till, I am so drunk. I’m in no fit state to be discussing such serious matters…” you tell him as you walk back towards the hotel. Schneider and Paul were still at the bar drinking and the two of you had decided to leave them there.

“Well, yes. I’m pretty drunk too, but you’re definitely a mess.” Till laughs, and it sends ripples through you. It’s a sound that you relish in.

“Bloody Landers, that fucking alcoholic. I swear to God that man has hollow legs.” You laugh, gripping onto his arm to steady yourself as you cross the threshold to the hotel. 

“How he drinks us all under the table is a mystery to the world. I’m convinced he’s actually a robot. There’s no way he drank all that beer. He must have been tipping it away.” He tells you, and you’re convinced that he’s right. You really do want to speak to him about your feelings but that very small sober part of your brain that’s been battered by tequila and beer is telling you not to in the quietest voice. It’s still there, but you can hardly hear it anymore. 

As you step into the elevator, you both fall into an awkward silence. You want nothing more than to launch yourself at him but you think better of it; you’re drunk, but not that drunk.

“Wait, Richard you said serious matters? What’s going on?” He says and you can see the cogs working out his alcohol soaked brain to put two and two together.

“Oh, it’s nothing really. It’s not that serious.” You tell him, rubbing at the back of your neck, and you notice that this elevator seems to be moving slowly on purpose. 

“No, really… What is it?” he asks, and he turns on you, facing you, staring at you.

“I don’t really know.” You tell him, “Because I’m not really sure what’s going on myself. B-but-…” You stop yourself. Are you really going to divulge all this shit you’ve been holding in for so long? Are you sure you really want to alter the dynamics of this well-oiled machine? Are you 100% certain of what you’re going to say to him?

“But what?” He asks, frowning softly, pushing a hand through his hair, laying that hand onto your shoulder in a sign of moral support. 

“But. Till… I think I’m in love with you.” You tell him. 

He stares at you for the longest time. His breathing slows, and his shoulders drop, hand staying firmly on your shoulder. 

“Well, okay.” He starts, and you feel your heart drop to your toes. This is it. He doesn’t feel the same. You’ve changed everything about this relationship now and there’s no taking it back. “Well, I guess things have been very close between us, right?” he says very calmly, and he lifts your chin because you’re unable to look at him. “I can understand how you’re feeling, because I’m certain I feel the same.” He tells you, and he leans forward, stopping almost too close to your face. The scent is an intoxicating mix of tequila, dark beer and his very distinctive aftershave. And you close the distance, very bravely you feel, and press your lips against his. And dear lord it’s everything you’d ever imagined it to be. His lips are so much softer than you thought they would be, and he’s a lot less forceful than you’d imagined. He’s not what you’d expect at all. He slowly presses you back against the wall of the elevator, and it’s like heaven. But the doors spring open on your floor and he moves away from you, a slight chill wrapping around your waist as he does so. You’d never noticed before, but Till is so hot; literally burning. His body runs at a much higher temperature than you’d experienced in another person, like the blood in his veins is constantly running at the surface to cool him. But he takes your hand and leads you down the hall, passed your room, passed the other’s rooms and finally arrived at his. This was one of the rare occasions that you’d all gotten your own hotel rooms and it’d been a blessing in disguise. 

As soon as that door clicks shut, he’s on you; pressing hot, wet kisses against your skin, hands exploring your frame in excruciating detail. His hands rest on your hips, leading you backwards towards the bed, the two of you falling back against the soft mattress. You think for a moment that he’s taking control, that he’s in charge here and things are moving how he wants them to, but it soon becomes apparent that he’s handing control of himself over to you, and he’s moving carefully, waiting for your instruction. This strikes you as completely strange, but as your brain finally kicks into gear it makes perfect sense. You gently lay your hand against his chest, guiding him so he’s lying back and you move to straddle his hips. The two of you work at stripping one another of your clothes, and you take great care in taking in every inch of skin as it’s exposed to you. It’s not as if you haven’t seen him naked before; you’ve literally witnessed Oliver rinsing Till off with a hose, on a camp site, where Till wandered around completely naked. But this is different. This is witnessing him in a whole different context. It feels wholly more intimate than any other time you’ve seen him. But you’re no stranger to being close to him. Many a nights have been spent snuggled up together on sofas, in tour buses and motel rooms among other places. But this still is the furthest the two of you have gone together. And it just feels right. It feels perfect to you that this is how it should happen. Admittedly, you’d have preferred a sober mind, but you’ve really got to work with what you’ve got. 

You take every opportunity to run your hands over his skin, to put your mouth on his flesh as often as you can, nipping lightly at the flesh on his throat. You know most people might disagree, but to you, he’s the most perfect human being you’ve ever encountered. You stop a moment, almost kicking yourself for ruining the moment, but it needs discussing. He stares up at you with wide eyes, frowning.

“Why did you stop?” he asks, 

“Do you have any… You know? _Stuff?_ ”

“Stuff? What stuff?”

“You know… Condoms and lube?”

“Richard,” Till starts, moving to prop himself up on his elbows, “That is the most unromantic thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

“Well, you know, I thought I’d ask! Especially the last one because I don’t want to hurt you!” 

Till’s expression softens, and he smiles, his fingers curling around the back of your neck to pull you down into a kiss. “You won’t hurt me.” He tries to reassure you. 

“No, Till.” You sit up, frowning, “It will hurt if it’s not done properly! Seriously, do you have anything?”

“I have a mouth full of spit we could use?”

“Till, that’s fucking disgusting.”

He moves then, moving you from his hips as he gets up, “You were literally about to put your dick in my arsehole and you’re concerned that a little bit of spit is disgusting. Come on, Richard.” He laughs, digging around in his bag. “I’m pretty certain some girl had some and left it and I put it in my bag for some reason…” he explains, and you feel a pang of jealousy hit you then. It puts a little more fuel to the flame as he adds, “She was weirdly into butt-stuff. I didn’t question it though.” It makes you a little angry that he’d mention sleeping with another person while you’ve not only admitted your deepest feelings to him but you’re also in the middle of attempting to consummate this relationship.

“Right.”

“Ah! Here it is!” he says triumphantly, throwing the bottle towards Richard. He crawls back onto the bed, the hard lines of his body pressing taught muscles against his skin. While you are a little angry, you can’t get over just how beautiful he is. You’re aware that’s not really a word to describe someone as masculine as Till, but he is. He is beautiful. 

He lies back on the bed, allowing you to move yourself into position, and you take great pleasure in preparing him. You turn him over, propping his hips up with a pillow. He’s made you feel angry, but you’re so filled with lust at this moment that you’re not stopping for love nor money. As you press one slicked finger carefully against him, you lean down to bite your teeth down into his shoulder, and you feel his body giving into you. This little power trip does wonders for your ego, and your lust. You watch his fists ball in the sheets below you as you push another finger forward, curling them against him as inhuman noises spill from his lips. They aren’t pained expressions, but the sounds are so arousing that it’s becoming painful to wait. You’ve hardly been touched and you’re almost there yourself.

“I told you it’d be painful without, right?” You whisper against his ear, kissing the back of his neck, over the bite marks on his shoulder. 

“Shut the fuck up.” He laughs, letting out a shaky groan as you withdraw your fingers. He doesn’t have condoms but you’re certain you’re both clean. You’ve been tested recently, and you know he probably has too and there’s no way of hiding anything from anyone in this band, so you’re fairly certain you’re safe. You use a little more of the lube, running your hand over yourself before gripping his hips, positioning yourself. And as you roll your hips forward, it’s the most wonderful sensation you’ve ever experienced to date. You move slow, and his hand comes back to grip yours on his hip, holding tightly. You know this is hurting him a little more than he’d hoped and in a way there’s a sadistic part of your mind which is enjoying this, but you stop, nonetheless, waiting for him to acclimatise to what is happening to him. 

“J-jesus Christ…” He groans, his body visibly relaxing under you as you lean down to press feather-light kisses across his shoulders. You feel the tension leaving his body and you begin to move, the feeling almost too much for you to handle. But he stops you again, pushing back so he can get onto his hands and knees rather than lying down. You know this is going to make his knee hurt in the morning, but you’re both so caught up in the lust of the moment that it’s a secondary thought. You begin to move, hands exploring his skin, feeling the softness of it beneath your fingers. You notice, for the first time, that he is covered in scars. You know a lot of these came from Flake smashing neon tube lights across Till’s back, but you hadn’t thought they’d scarred that badly. But the healed skin shines in the dim light, and you can’t help but trace your fingers over them, and you feel him move again, one shoulder dropping as he reaches his hand underneath, touching himself in time to your thrusts. There’s something incredibly animalistic about him like this, and you wish you could see his face, and regret allowing your anger fuelled lust to turn him over. Maybe if this happens again you can think better of it. 

You know he’s coming to his end because you’ve heard it through thin hotel walls, and you can tell by his moans getting deeper, his breath getting shakier, and the way his body almost folds up on itself. His head hangs low between his shoulders as he comes, spilling onto the bed beneath the two of you, and the sheer force of it rippling through him drags you over the edge with him; your hips moving erratically, thrusting out your orgasm hard against him. It’s like falling over a cliff-edge; he takes you with him, but you’d willingly follow him into the dark. 

You both collapse to the bed, and you hear a slight groan of disgust as he lies on top of the wet patch on the sheets, but you hold him tightly, burying your face between his shoulder blades. 

“Fucking hell, Richard.” He groans, slowly moving himself to roll onto his side, taking you with him. You don’t take your arms from him, you just hold him, feeling very needy, desperate for this contact. “Are you okay?” he asks, running his hands over your arms that’re locked across his stomach. You groan in response, unable to make any kind of coherent response to him at this moment. “Move over, I don’t want to lie in the wet.” He tells you, and you reluctantly shift. He takes this opportunity to turn onto his back so he can see you, and he wastes no time in pressing a kiss, deep and longing, to your lips. 

“Till,” You start, but you realise that you have no words to offer to him. You don’t want to ruin this moment because you know you talk too much. You just lie there, staring at him for a moment, searching for appropriate words to offer him.

“I know. It’s okay.” He says again, kissing your forehead.

The two of you fall asleep, your back pressed firmly up against Till’s chest, his strong arms holding you tightly against him. There’s nowhere in this world you’d rather be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel I should probably do a little bit of explaining. 
> 
> Essentially, for those of you who've never encountered _Dante's Inferno_ before, there are nine circles of hell which dictate what your sins were and how you'll be punished; Limbo, Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Anger, Heresy, Violence, Fraud and Treachery. the further down you are in the circles, the worse your crime was. So Limbo is the first circle and Treachery is the worst of the worst. 
> 
> I spent a long time on my under-grad studying the poem and understanding it as part of one of my English Literature modules at uni and recently I've spent a great deal of time going over it in brief with some of my students with regards to Macbeth! It's very interesting stuff, really. But ultimately I've decided that this would make a great fic.
> 
> Now, this isn't as nice as it seems, really. Richard holds a fair bit of resentment towards his lover-boy because of mixed messages, the sheer length of time it took for the two of them to finally get to this point, talking about other people he'd slept with while him and Richard are about to do the stuff, and basically, Richard is getting a little bit mean. He takes a sort of odd pleasure in inflicting pain, no matter how small, on Till. And this, as we travel through the circles of hell, will worsen as time goes on. 
> 
> So basically, [here's a helpful info-graphic about the circles of hell for you to inspect](https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7273/7628645108_7d3dc7a20e_b.jpg). Hopefully that helps to break it down because I'm terrible at explaining shit. And also, I really hope this hasn't come across as incredibly patronising because I'm just being a literature nerd, which is all I ever want to do really! I don't get many opportunities anymore! So I'm letting all that out on you guys! 
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy reading this! Here's to many more!
> 
> xxxx


	3. Gluttony

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Till is not someone you ever thought you’d feel this way about but as you sit in the apartment you share with him, watching him shovel another chocolate into his mouth you begin to feel that disgust creeping up into your throat like bile. He tells you that it helps him concentrate, but you’ve noticed his body changing. You’re looking at it all the time, how could you not notice?_

You’ve grown to hate him. Everything is in excess. But you also love him more than anything. He’s completely different now, but you can see it, underneath all that horrid exterior is still that beautiful, poetic soul you fell in love with. But even after all these years, you find it difficult to tell one another that you love each other. It’s been said between you maybe twice since this relationship began. It made you laugh because Flake summed it up perfectly; _All you men from Schwerin are the same; all too worried about chipping your masculinity_. But you actually loath him. Till is not someone you ever thought you’d feel this way about but as you sit in the apartment you share with him, watching him shovel another chocolate into his mouth you begin to feel that disgust creeping up into your throat like bile. He tells you that it helps him concentrate, but you’ve noticed his body changing. You’re looking at it all the time, how could you not notice? 

You watch him scribbling away on his moleskine journals at his desk in your living room and you’re happy, at least, that the terrible bout of writer’s block that he was suffering has dissipated but the habits that come with the depression he experienced in the meantime have gone nowhere. He’s still overeating, lying about, too many drugs and not enough time. Cocaine for you has slimmed you down ever so slightly, and made your tits look amazing, if you do say so yourself (yes, congratulate yourself on your peck exercises later). But for him, the excess of drugs and alcohol have made him pile on the pounds and you can see his beautiful swimmer’s body disappearing beneath layers of fat. 

“I was thinking of cooking steak and salad for dinner.” You announce. You’ve been dropping horribly sly little hints that maybe he wants to look after himself more but it doesn’t seem to be working. “I bought some really nice, lean cuts of meat earlier today when I was shopping.”

“I’m okay for now, maybe later.” he tells you. “I don’t want to lose my flow.” He says calmly. He must be aware of how you feel. He must notice how you rarely look at him anymore. He must know. But, with all the arguing and bravado, he’s so affectionate towards you that you feel terrible for being so superficial. 

You’d never want to get into another fist fight with him though. No, not in a lifetime. He might have piled on a few pounds but he’s definitely still got all that muscular strength there. He handed your arse to you, and you know it was your own fault because you took the first, and very unnecessary, swing. You watch him as he gathers himself to his feet, heading over to the drinks cabinet, helping himself to a rather large glass of whiskey, his fifth of the day and the bottle is almost empty. He doesn’t offer to pour you one too, and you put down your book and get to your feet. 

“I’m going to practice guitar.” You tell him, sighing softly as you move behind him, pressing a loving kiss to the back of his neck, hoping that he hasn’t forgotten you exist entirely. 

“I’ll see you in there in a while. I think I almost have something we can start formulating into a song!” he smiles, and you smile in return, even though you don’t want him to join you. You need some time alone from him. 

You close the door behind you and lean back against the cool wooden barricade that separates you from the object of your hatred. You’re aware that hatred is an emotion which stems from love; you knew, deep down, that one day you’d end up hating him because two large personalities competing with one another was never going to work. And now he’s just becoming so unattractive. He just looks tired all the time. He has no interest in you at all and has shown none for at least three weeks now. And you’re getting tired of it. You know it’s not the root of all relationships but when you’re not getting any, sex is literally all you can think about. But his sexual demands of you were getting too weird for your tastes, so you put a stop to it before he just stopped showing any interest in you entirely. But as you’ve said before; Till is now a man of excess; too much sex; too much alcohol; too many drugs; too much of everything. You sit yourself down and pick up your guitar, gently running your hand over the smooth, varnished wooden body to feel every curve of it. Guitars are strange, in that they can make the most beautiful sounds known to man, and then on the flip side you can force them to make unnatural, ethereal noises which terrifying people to their very core. You’d seen it done, catching a glimpse of Sonic Youth at a festival you were both playing and you wanted so badly to speak with Thurston Moore to try and understand how he made his guitar make those noises, but you never got your opportunity. 

You missed that opportunity to go and snort as much cocaine as humanly possible with your band mates and drink as much alcohol as you could get into you without passing out. You’ve always had a high tolerance, but it only grows when being abused in excess. You don’t remember much after that concert. You just remember waking up with a terrible headache and a nose bleed. That’s when you stopped shoving cocaine up your nostrils before you burned out your septum. But Till, no, Till would never stop. You’ve begged him before, pleaded with him because he can get quite nasty on those drugs, especially when you’ve got no idea where they’ve come from because some unknown runner had a connection in a city and knew he could lay his hands on some quick. You had no idea what it’d been cut with, but you couldn’t stop him doing it.

You hear a loud thud outside, frowning as you get up to pull the door open. 

“Till, are you alright?” you call, frowning when there is no response. “Till?” You call again, and you make your way back down the hall, seeing him lying on the floor.

“Oh Jesus fucking Christ, Till! Are you okay?” You cry as you rush to his side, dropping to your knees next to him. “Till?” 

“I’m fine, really, I’m fine.” He tells you, rubbing at his head. He’s caught his eyebrow on the corner of his desk as he fell, and you feel a slight annoyance at this. 

“What happened?” you ask him.

“My knee gave out from under me as I tried to get up and I couldn’t catch myself on anything…”

 _Because you’re blind fucking drunk._ you say in your head, helping him to sit up slowly. “Stay there,” you tell him. “I’ll go get something to clean this up.”

You curse him as you leave the room, heading to the bathroom to get the first aid kit. As you head back, you look down at the mess that sits in a heap on the floor in front of you. 

“Richard, what is happening to me?” He asks you, staring up at you with blood running down his left cheek. You drop down to your knees next to him and begin to look at the cut that appears to be gushing, but you know that head wounds always bleed more than anything else.

“What do you mean, Liebchen?” 

“I thought it was gone. And thank you for being so bloody patronising.” He frowns, gently resting his hand against your thigh. “It’s nowhere near gone.” And you can hear him growing distressed. This is why he never drinks whiskey. What possessed him?

“What’s not gone?”

“The writer’s block.” He admits, groaning softly both in pain as you dab at his face, and in anguish at himself. “Gott it sounds so pathetic when you say it out loud.” He says, and you can hear the frustration in his tone.

“I thought you nearly had something?” you say calmly, concentrating on the wound above his eye, cleaning him up. “Jesus, Till, you really came down hard. I think this might need some butterfly sutures.”

“Fuck it.” He sighs, gently squeezing your thigh as you continue. “I thought I’d got past it but I haven’t. I felt so much brighter. I thought the depression easing off had taken that fucking block with it but it hasn’t. I’m such a fucking idiot.”

“Till, Stop.” You tell him, gently cupping his cheek. “Stop it now, please. Don’t speak about yourself like that.”

“Oh come on Richard I’m basically obsolete now!” he tells you, growling, “You and the others don’t even bother with me anymore, you’re too busy writing these great riffs that I just can’t match lyrics for!” he hisses, “And you’re the worst of them all!” he tells you, making you sit back to look at him. 

“I’m the worst of them?”

“Yes. You are. Because you pretend to be interested, and you pretend to care, and you sit here and I can feel you judging me every minute of the fucking day, and then you come and plant poison kisses against my skin and it makes me sick because I know you don’t fucking mean it, Richard.”

You can only stare at him in horror. He’s hit the nail on the head. “You don’t fucking love me, Richard. I don’t know when it happened, but you fell out of love with me a long time ago. I don’t even know why you’re still here.”

You know this is the whiskey talking, because you know what whiskey does to the human brain. You know it’s almost as bad on the aggression scale as Cocaine and you know that it affects Till more than the rest of you, but this knowledge doesn’t make his words cut you any less.

“Right.” You say softly, dropping your hands into your lap. “Is that how you really feel?” you ask him, trying hard to swallow the lump in your throat. You can’t even look at him. “You really think I don’t love you?”

“You won’t come near me, Richard. You curl up at the furthest point in the bed from me. I feel you shudder whenever I touch you. That’s why I stopped.” He starts to get up, and groans as his knee twists with him attempting to move.

“No, no stay put a while longer. Stop, Till…” You tell him. You sit in silence for the longest time, just watching him. He won’t even look at you.

“I still love you, Till.” You tell him, gently taking his large hands in yours.

“Fine.” He says, gently squeezing your fingers with his. You go back to patching up his eye, gently and carefully placing the butterfly sutures onto the cut there before pressing a long kiss against his (not cut open) forehead.

“I don’t say it often enough, Till. I love you.” You tell him, gently cupping his cheeks. “Now let’s get you up and into that chair and I’ll make us some sober-up food, okay?”

“I’m not drunk, Richard.” He tells you, and you give him the look. “I’m not drunk.” He protests again. 

“Yes, you are Till. You’ve drunk the best part of a bottle of whiskey in the last few hours and all you’ve eaten is cherry liquors. So you might not feel it, but you are. Now help me get you up.”

“Richard, I’m fine.” He frowns, attempting again to get himself from the floor. You watch him as he stands over you; it might have taken him a while to get there but he’s standing above you. He’s still quite intimidating, despite the fact that you know every inch of him. You’ve never been able to get over his sheer presence. “I’m not hungry anyway, I’m just going to lie down.”

“Till, wait.” You tell him, grabbing for his hand so he can’t limp away too quickly. “Stop. Just, don’t leave me right now, please?” you ask him, gripping his hand for dear life. You know you’re coming across as needy, but you don’t care. The fact that he thinks you don’t love him has cut you way deeper than you thought it ever would. 

“Rich-…”

“Till, please.” You say, and you move to wrap your arms around him, burying your face in the crook of his neck. “Don’t think I don’t love you. Please, because I do. Very much so.” You say softly, and you feel his arms come together around you, pulling you close.

“I know.” He sighs, and he presses a kiss against your temple. “I love you too.” He sighs.

He takes your hand and the two of you head towards the bedroom. What starts as a cuddle leads to more, hands moving over strange skin as you reacquaint yourselves with one another. You think to yourself that while he might not be the perfect person, he’s yours and that’s all that matters. All the jealousy you’d ever felt melts away and all the loathing you’d ever considered leaves your mind as he touches you with a tenderness only he could bestow. And really, you do love him. You are obsessively infatuated with him. His kisses and caresses are the same as they’ve ever been, and you can ignore everything you’ve begun to loath about him because right now, you love him more than anything. Deep down, he’s the same person you fell in love with, so who cares about appearances, right? You can fix addiction. You can fix the gluttony. You can correct his, and your, appearance. But you never want him to change. Not ever.

While you know you two probably aren’t healthy for one another, you can’t help yourselves. You love each other, even if you can’t admit it too often. And while you know you should probably get out of this relationship as soon as you can, before you really start hating each other, you can’t bring yourself to do so. 

You figure that the two of you are both gluttons for punishment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't worry, super smut is coming with greed. I'll also update this properly later on because I need to go to bed.


	4. Greed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"He slowly rolls over onto his back, lying next to you in a sweaty, post-coital heap. “Stop being such a greedy bag of dicks, will you?” he said softly, laughing as he looks over at you."_

You don’t like it when people touch what’s rightfully yours. You don’t appreciate it when Paul borrows one of your guitars, even if just for a moment. You don’t like it when someone takes your food from the fridge in the tour bus even though you bought those sweets especially for yourself and you’re one hundred percent certain that you’re the only one that likes those sweets and you even wrote your fucking name on it and there’s still one or two missing. And you especially don’t like it when someone touches Till when they know damn sure he’s yours.

You sit back, downing beer after beer, chasing that with large glasses of vodka, as you watch all those girls surrounding him. He picked himself up and dropped a load of weight, but definitely built it all back in muscle again. He was getting back to what he used to be but he was still growing larger. His arms and shoulders had always been your favourite part of him, something with enough meat to sink your teeth into while also providing that tenderness you needed when you were feeling extra desperate for attention. But you watch their hands dragging over his skin, and you know he’s lapping up the attention but does he have to be so _overt_ about it? 

He knows how it makes you feel when he does this. And you know why he does this. But just because you know the reason doesn’t make it any less upsetting. Paul sits down next to you and pats your knee.

“Come on Richard, what’s got you so glum?” he asks, smiling at you. Paul; the eternal sunshine, how does he do it? How does he keep that smile on his face all the time? Even when he’s trying to be angry and mean he looks like he’s smiling.

“I’m not in the mood, Paul. Please, go and irritate someone else…” you tell him, draining another bottle of its contents.

“Ahhhh come on Richard! Tell me why you’re all frowny faced? You look much prettier when you smile!”

“Fuck. Off. Paul.” You tell him, and there’s warning in your tone. You watch him follow your line of sight and his gaze lands on Till surrounded by beautiful women.

“Ahhh!” he exclaims, “The old green dragon rearing its nasty little head, is it?” he laughs, slapping you on the thigh. “Come on! Let’s get you out of here! Let’s get you some more beer!”

You finally give in, after several come ons from Paul, attempting to coax you from your seat, you finally give in. But you’re still incredibly angry, but you need Paul to shut the fuck up for ten, maybe fifteen minutes. 

“Actually, you know what? I’m going to head back to the hotel room. I’ve had enough for tonight. When he finally gets his head out of that gaggle of bimbos over there tell him I’ll see him in the morning.” You tell Paul, not waiting for a reply as you turn and head towards the taxi for the hotel from the venue. You’re done for tonight, you know. You just want a hot shower, a warm bed and good night’s sleep, which you know is never going to happen if Till is with you because he’s very handsy when he’s had a few, and also the snoring can be difficult to sleep with too.

You let yourself into the hotel room and collapse onto the bed. You’re exhausted, but you need to have a proper shower before you sleep because you can’t sleep when you’re all sweaty and gross. As you climb into the shower and the warm water cascades over you, you can’t help but think of him. Anger swells in your belly every time you think about him surrounded by all those people, his attention devoted wholly to them and not you.

 _”You are mine”_ you growl to yourself, groaning in frustration as you rinse yourself off, your anger only growing as you cover yourself in soap to get yourself clean of sweat and stage make-up. 

As you turn off the water, you hear the hotel room door close and you know it’s him, but that doesn’t make it any better. You’re still angry at him, even if he was only twenty minutes behind you getting back to the hotel.

“Richard?!” you hear him call out, and even the sound of his voice makes you angry. You don’t answer, you just wrap a towel around yourself and storm out into the bedroom, ignoring him. You don’t want to speak to him right now, but you know you’re going to have to, and you know it’s going to end in an argument but you just can’t deal with that thought right now. You just want to get into bed.

“Richard? Are you okay?” He asks, and you can feel him watching you as you dry yourself off, slowly dressing yourself. You feel his hands creep up your sides, gently caressing your skin.

“Get. Off. Of. Me.” You tell him, the anger dripping in your tone. You want him away from you right now. 

“Richard, what is the matter with you? Why are you in such a mood?!”

That’s it. It’s like waving a red rag to a bull in a china shop. 

“What is the matter with me?” you turn on him, letting your vest fall about your hips, not bothering to adjust it. “What’s the matter with me?” you tone growing more frantic as you speak, moving towards him. “Really, Dietrich? Really?” you growl, watching him step back to get away from you. “What’s wrong with me? While you sit around, surrounded by those fucking whores of yours, your fucking hands all over them. What’s the matter with me?” you scoff, shaking your head, turning back to finish getting ready for bed. 

“Richard, what’re you talking about?!”

You round on him once more and he visibly shrinks. You’ve never noticed you had this effect on him when you’re angry, but you’ve never known it to happen this quickly. He’s actually not the kind of person who likes confrontation. He knows how to handle himself but you are aware that arguments make him incredibly anxious.

“I didn’t touch them.” He says plainly, no expression in his tone or on his face, just blankly staring at the carpet beneath his feet. This puppy-dog display of defeat is usually enough to make you calm down, but you’re far too gone at this point and your anger needs to get out of you somehow. It just so happens that Till is the object of your anger this evening.

“I fucking watched you, Till.” You hiss, moving closer. “I fucking watched you with them, laughing with them, touching them. Jesus Christ you might as well have fucked them right in front of me.” You hiss, shaking your head. You can’t even look at him right now. “You were all over them just as much as they were of you.” You tell him, and you know that this is part way jealousy of the attention he receives from fans, and partly because he’s yours and no one else’s to touch. 

“I’m sorry.” He says softly, “But I did nothing wrong, Richard.” As you look up, he’s staring straight at you. “I didn’t touch them. They were sitting around being friendly. You’re overreacting.” He tells you and that only makes you angrier.

“What the fuck did you just say? I’m… _Overreacting_?” you hiss, unable to stop yourself, you land a hard punch against his cheek, and you feel the impact in your hand more than he probably did in his face. It hurts, and your hand is throbbing; you’ve probably broken a knuckle in your hand, but it serves you right. As the pain sets in, you realise he was right, but it’s too late. He stares at you with real hurt in his expression. 

“Till, I’m so sorry…” You say as your anger dissipates. He pushes you away from him. “Till, stop, wait please!” you call, following him as he takes a look at himself in the mirror, seeing the bruise already beginning to form. 

“Do you feel better now?!” he growls at you, staring at you in his reflection in the mirror. “Did that make you feel better about your petty jealousy?!” his hisses, pushing past you to grab his bag of things. “See you in the morning Richard.” He spits out at you, slamming the hotel room door behind him. All you can do is crawl into bed and cry. You know this greed you have in you is poison but he is yours. You want him all to yourself at all times. What can you do?

As you lie there in the dark, alone and curled up on your side of the bed, you feel cold. You wish he was here because Till Lindemann is the human radiator. You miss his presence and you fear you’ve fucked everything up for good. 

You hear the door go, and you hear the bottom of the door drag on the carpet as it’s pushed open. The room is momentarily flooded with light before the door closes again, blocking out the hallway lights. You hear footsteps, and then the mattress depresses under the weight of someone behind you. You don’t turn, but you can tell it’s him by the sound of his breathing. You’ve had him breathing on you for the longest time, you know what his breathing pattern is like. 

You feel surprised as his arms wrap around you and pull you close to him. He buries his face against the crook of your neck and holds you tightly. You don’t know what to do, so you lie perfectly still, relishing the contact between you both. 

“Till…”

“I didn’t touch them…” are his words, and you feel your heart breaking. He might have been angry, but you’d hurt him more than anything. While he puts on this bravado of bravery, you realise that he’s more sensitive than most are, and you in your greed and your jealousy had broken that unspoken promise to him that you’d never cut him that deep. 

“I know, I was angry and jealous and I just want you all to myself.” You say softly, gently turning in his arms, pressing a soft kiss to his lips. You take a moment to look at his cheek in the soft light that drifts in from a street light outside and you can see a bruise forming there, to which you press a soft kiss to it. “I’m sorry. I should never have hit you. I shouldn’t.”

“You’re right there.” He tells you with a soft laugh and hugs you closer, burying his face in your chest. You hold him tight for a while, and the two of you lie there in a comfortable silence. But he moves soon, and presses a deep and longing kiss to your lips, his hands moving to pull your hips closer to his. You know what he wants from you, and you’re inclined to give it to him. 

He presses feather light kisses against your skin, across you neck and shoulder, gently pushing you onto your back. He settles himself on top of you, and it’s a welcomed, familiar weight against your body. You want to feel the whole weight of him bearing down on you, to know that he’s there, and to know that he’s yours. 

“Please, tell me you’re mine.” You plead, hands moving over hot skin, nails digging into his back as he rolls his hips against yours.

“I am yours, forever and always,” he tells you, and that’s all you need to hear from him. You don’t need any more words from him now. That’s enough. He slowly dips into your bag that you dragged over next to the bed and finds the small bottle of lube you carry with you. While the two of you don’t have sex very often on tour, for reasons of privacy and you’re mostly just too tired, it’s always best to keep some on you, just in case. You’re thankful to your brain that you kept it there because you almost threw it away a few days ago, thinking you weren’t ever going to use it at all. 

His fingers slowly sink into you, and you are needy and desperate for any kind of contact from him. He’s watching you, gauging your reaction as his fingers dip deep inside, curling against you until you’re desperate for him to start. 

“Please, Till.” You moan, and he laughs, gently removing his fingers, positioning himself above you. He slowly inches himself forward, leaning down to press a kiss to your lips first, before moving quickly, sinking into you. The feeling takes your breath away, and he waits patiently for you to adjust. You grip the tops of his arms tightly and will your body to calm down. 

“Jesus Christ Till!” You groan, sliding your hands down his sides. 

“I mean you can just call me Till, no reason to call me by my full name,” he laughs softly, leaning down to kiss you once more as he starts to move, rolling his hips carefully against yours at first. You take the opportunity to touch him, to feel the taut muscles under his skin. He might be getting older, you know, but he’s still as strong as an ox, and he’s built like it too. You can’t help but admire him. He’s such a beautiful human being. He moves, gripping you tightly, he pulls your body close to his as he moves, and you revel in the maximum contact you have with him at this moment. 

But he slowly pulls away, his hand moving down to touch you. He moves his fist over you in time with his thrusts, groaning softly as he watches you, an almost pained expression on his face and you realise he’s waiting for you to climax before he can. But he doesn’t need to worry. The overload of sensuality hits you all at once and you spill over his hand, onto your stomach and he follows you soon after, his hips thrusting erratically against yours, crying out like a wounded animal as he does. He collapses on top of you and holds you close to him, kissing whatever skin he can reach as he holds you close.

“I am yours,” he repeats, kissed you deeply, “Always and forever.”

“And I am yours,” You tell him.

He slowly rolls over onto his back, lying next to you in a sweaty, post-coital heap. “Stop being such a greedy bag of dicks, will you?” he said softly, laughing as he looks over at you.

“I can’t help it. I mean, I don’t want to share you.” You tell him, laughing softly.

“You don’t have to, Richard. I am yours.” He smiles.

“And I yours.” You repeat, settling close into his side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I always find it weird that being greedy is worse than being lustful. Idk, but anyway.
> 
> Five more circles of hell to go.
> 
> P.s; Guys, Idk if you know this but I'm super lazy. So I'm in desperate need of someone to proof-read my shit because I literally cannot be bothered to read my own smut before I post it here. I rely on the fact that I'm a literature graduate to get me through with good writing. But I know it's full of awful mistakes. So if you'd like to be my proof-reading official, that'd be incredible. Look at it as you're getting a sneak preview of each chapter (even though you're doing a really difficult job because I'm TERRIBLE!)


	5. Anger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He’s not quite at that sexual peak you need him to be at yet which is a little less ragey and a little more horny when he’s like this._

On your list of types of sex you love, hot and angry hate sex is right up there near the top. You’re aware that no matter what Till is angry at, once it sort of dissipates from blind rage into deep-rooted anger, he needs to put his dick in something and you know what’s going to happen next.

It just so happens that this time, you’re the target of his anger. You’ve spent the last two weeks pushing whatever buttons you knew how to push for no other reason than because you could. At this moment, he’s in blind rage and it’s focused entirely on you. You didn’t really mean to get him to this point but it just kind of happened. You can feel blood running down the back of your neck where he’s pushed you up against a wall, your head smashing into the brick work, breaking the skin. You enjoy a little bit of pain but it’s making you feel sick this time. You feel dizzy. He’s not quite at that sexual peak you need him to be at yet which is a little less ragey and a little more horny when he’s like this. So you stagger back and attempt to hide yourself. You need to get away from him to allow him to calm down. You’re the object of his anger at the moment, and you know there’s nothing in this world except for rabid wolves that could possibly match his aggression. 

You lock the bathroom door and take a look at yourself in the harsh, fluorescent light. You can see the yellow purple hue of a bruise forming on your temple, and you can see the blood dripping over your shoulder. You’re aching and you can hear him smashing things up outside in the hotel room. You know management is going to go crazy again because they’re going to have to front the money for this once again. They told the two of you that it’d be the last time they’d do it, but you know they’re not being serious. They just need to get sorted, put on the puppy dog eyes and everything will be fine. 

You clean the wound on the back of your head, and upon further inspection discovered that the cut was very small, wouldn’t even need stitches. You clean it up and put a cold flannel on your eye for a while until you hear the smashing calm down. You make yourself feel a little more human before unlocking the door, poking your head out to make sure you’re safe. You walk into the bedroom and see the state he’s left it in; smashed glass everywhere, feathers from the pillows all over the place, blood staining the sheets. 

“Jesus Christ, Till.” You say softly, looking over him. “It looks like someone murdered a gaggle of geese in here…” You tell him, moving towards him slowly. “Do you feel better now?”

“Get away from me.” He says in a low voice and he gets to his feet, walking to the bathroom. He’s probably going to attempt to clean himself up, but you know he’ll miss those cuts on his shoulder and the top of his back. You wait though. You’ll wait until he’s ready to come back out so you can talk to him. You can hear him pacing up and down the small space in the bathroom before he turns on the water and climbs into the shower. You know he’s in pain and he’s still in a bad mood, and you know he’s going to just be in a terrible mood for a few days but he needs to calm down and get into bed because you both have to be up early. As much as you’d like to fuck the life out of him right now, it’s looking less and less likely that that’s going to happen. You know now that what you want has nothing to do with it anymore. You’re just going to have to work with what you get. 

“Till,” you knock on the door, sighing softly, “Come on out now please. Come and sit with me. I’ll clean and patch you up, okay?” You press your ear to the door. You can’t hear anything. What the hell is he doing in there?

The door swings open and he’s staring at you, squinting a little at the harshness of the lights. You know his head is hurting. He’s like Bruce Banner when he’s like this. 

“I really hurt.” He tells you, and wanders forward.

“I know. Come on, lie on the bed and close your eyes. I’ll only keep the light that I need.”

You watch him as he crawls onto the bed, collapsing onto the mattress. He really is beautiful, but you know he’s in pain, and as much as he can be a masochist, you’re not sure if the adrenaline has worn off and he’s actually beginning to feel it. You grab what you need from the first aid kit in the bathroom and crawl on top of him, sitting yourself on his hips to hold him still. You always feel close to him when you’re patching him up like this. You like to fix things; he’s definitely something that requires fixing. You run your hands gently over the skin. He has the softest skin you’ve ever felt, and you like to feel it at times like this, to take advantage of his submissive position underneath you. You gently wipe the blood away from his skin with clean gauze before wiping some antibacterial gel onto him, covering the grazes with some plasters. You can feel him flinch every time you touch him and you know that his skin is extra sensitive, and in your mind you think ” _Good, I’m glad this hurts, because you can’t have your cake and eat it too!_ ” But then you feel vaguely guilty and remember that actually you caused the red mist to descend and it was your fault he’s in this state in the first place. 

You press the last plaster and a soft kiss to the nape of his neck, gently nuzzling you face into his damp hair, pressing your weight onto him as you wrap your arms around under him.

“I love you, you know that right?”

He grunts in response, groaning softly. “ _Get off me._ ”

“Well that’s not very nice, is it?” you quickly sit up, keeping yourself on top of him. “I said I love you.” you repeat, and he attempts to roll over from under you, throwing you off.

“Get. Off. Of me.”

“Till…”

He doesn’t wait this time. He grips your hips and lifts you from him, throwing you onto the mattress next to him. He sits up on the edge of the bed. You watch him with a frown on your face as he hunches over his knees, rubbing his eyes with his fists. “Till. I said I was sorry, okay? I mean it.” He doesn’t speak. He gets to his feet and heads for the bathroom again, locking the door behind him. You hear the shower start to go and slap your forehead. You just cleaned him up! He’s going to ruin it! You storm forward, hammering on the door. “Till! Your dressings! Stop! We don’t have any more plasters to cover them up!”

The door unlocks and swings open with such a force that you’re certain the hinges are sobbing.

_“Stop pretending to care about me Richard. Stop with all your fake love. I don’t want it anymore. Get away from me.”_

You just stare at him, and all those feelings of inadequacy you’re usually quite good at hiding come flooding into the forefront of your mind. “B-but I do care…” you stutter, “I don’t want you to wash off all that antibacterial stuff because the cuts will get infected… I… I don’t want you to get sick, Till…”

He says nothing, but there’s that growl again, and he slams the door shut in your face. You’re fully aware that you’re terrible to him. You’re an awful partner to him, and you do love him, but you’re just terrible. Some don’t believe in instant Karma. Maybe karma is saving that all up? Maybe Lady Karma is saving up all your terrible deeds until death? Maybe it’ll be slow and painful? And at the hands of Till Lindemann? You can imagine that. You can imagine the satisfaction he’d get from being the giver rather than the receiver. He’d loved it. 

You sit yourself back on the bed and sit patiently waiting for him, and watch the door. You can hear him hissing under the water as it rushes over his skin and you can imagine the colour of the water pooling in the bottom of the bath. That beautiful pink colour that diluted blood turns water. You just want to go on there and put your hands on him. He’s got such beautiful skin; it’s scarred and burned and bruised and you always just want to reach out and touch him. You always want to be close to him. 

He leaves the bathroom, and he’s standing in front of you in nothing but a towel; tall, toned and dripping wet. He’s like a cold glass of something sweet on a summer’s afternoon and you just want to lap him up. He says nothing to you and moves to get into his pants, dropping his towel.

“Till, will you talk to me?”

There’s just silence.

“Till, I said I was sorry.”

There’s nothing. He gets into bed, pulls the blankets up over himself and shuts off his light, back turned to me.

“Till, please.”

You slowly lie yourself down. You have to be careful. Silence normally means he’s surpassed anger and is onto something far more terrifying. He might snap on you once again. You lie on my back behind him, looking up at the ceiling.

“You know what it is, Richard? You know what drives me fucking crazy? It’s that arrogance that you have!” Till sits up in bed and stares at you. “Your fucking arrogance that you think you can act the way you do and then get away with it? Treat me like a fucking fool?” he hisses, staring down at you.

You sit yourself up so you’re at least on a level with him.

“Till, I don’t know what you’re talking about?”

“That’s exactly it! Richard, nothing is your fault! You don’t ever know anything about anything! You can do no wrong! The great, infallible Richard Kruspe!” He says, and you watch him slowly get to his feet. He’s getting tired now and he’s getting achy. The pain in his skin is taking over and his knee is starting to hurt. But he’s growing restless.

“Till…” You start, but actually he’s right and you don’t really have any words to say to him.

“Just don’t, Richard. I’m not interested.” He says, getting back into bed and curls up in his sheets.

You lie in silence for a while, and you know he’s not asleep because his breathing is still too harsh. He’s too pissed off to sleep.

“I do love you, Till.” You tell him, turning onto your side to face him. You press a kiss to the skin on his shoulder that isn’t all cut up. “I really do… Your cuts are weeping, by the way. Let me go and get something to cover them…”

“Just shut the fuck up Richard.” Till sighs, turning over onto his back. “The bed will soak it up, fuck it.”

You look over him, slowly leaning in to press a gentle kiss to his shoulder, “I love you Till.”

“I know.”

He slowly rolls over and presses a long, deep kiss against your lips, and it’s exactly what you’d been waiting so patiently for. He lies on top of me and he kisses you properly then. You lie back with him, lips locking with his. He does this thing when he’s kissing, and it drives you crazy in the best kind of way. His kisses start light, feather-light, and they gradually get harder, deeper, and he does this thing where he nibbles on your lower lip, but not hard enough for there to be any pain but it makes the skin on your lips all sensitive and you can feel it swelling and that’s what you love; an increase in sensation anywhere when you’re near him is perfect. And then he puts his fingers into your hair, and he does have the most incredible fingers; they’re so dexterous and soft and warm.

But he likes to be on top of you. He knows you enjoy the weight of another person bearing down on your chest and you know that he likes the sights below him. So you allow him to roll you over so he lies on top of you, his hands are still on you. His hands never leave your flesh, no matter what. And as he sits up to prepare you, he’s still running those fingers over you; touching your knees, your thighs, and the lower part of your stomach; he never stops touching me, but never touches where I want him to most. And that continuous contact makes your skin tingle all over, with the added touch of his fingers inside you, it’s almost too much for your body to handle. You have yet to meet another person who has mastered how to make your body feel the way he makes it feel.

Till is one of the most beautiful human beings you have ever encountered, and his beauty drives you insane. He has so many hang-ups about his skin, but you think it’s perfect. You don’t care that it’s been marred by scars or spots, and the structure of his face has been perfectly engineered to be so angelic. To you, he is the physical embodiment of ethereal beauty. You’d never believe he had the devil in him with the face of an angel. He’s a wicked boy with a wicked temper, everyone knows that. But if you’d never met him before you’d assume he was, well this angry human being ready to fight the world, but you know him better than that. You get to know and understand the complex being that lies underneath all that aggression and anger and heartache. You know that beautiful, sensitive soul who writes some of the most emotional poetry you’ve ever read. And in this position, staring up at him, you know that he’s got you under some kind of spell. He’s got you wrapped around his little finger and eating out of the palm of his hand, and while you like to think you’re in control here, you know he’s always got it. And as he curls his fingers into you, you gasp as he catches that sensitive sweet spot. Your mouth hangs open and you’re making desperate attempts for air as arousal coils around your insides and drains all the blood from your body, pooling it right around your hips. He o claims your lips, kissing you deeply. And you know you want his mouth on you at all times. He’s such a beautiful sight when he’s like this.

You dig your fingers into places you know will hurt him. You feel your fingers gripping at the skin on his shoulders, tips of your fingers digging into the cuts there, pushing hard onto them as he moves, making him move faster, harder against me. You’re aware you’re a moaning mess under him and he takes hold of your wrists to pin them above your head. As much as you love his hands on you, he needs to stop that.

He holds both your wrists under one hands, moving his other to wrap eager fingers around your cock. He knows you hates this. You hate not being in control. You hate not being able to use your hands and it makes you wriggle under him. You’re so desperate to come and you’re reaching new peaks of aggression to take control.

“Till… L-let go of my hands.”

“No.” he tells you, squeezing you a little tighter, and you can feel the first twitches of his orgasm coming to the surface as well as yours. And you screw your eyes shut as you come, spilling over your stomach and his hand. You wrap your legs tighter around his hips, pulling him deeper as he thrusts harder. And then he let go of your hands, thrusting a few more times before he falls over the edge. The noises that come from him, low and animalistic, erupting in his chest and catching in his throat. He buries his face against the crook of your neck, holding you so close to him, pressing your bodies together. You wrap your legs around his hips tighter and pull him closer, pulling him deeper into you despite both of you having reached your end. And when that post-orgasm haze starts to lift, you don’t want to speak. You don’t want to ruin this moment with words. They just seem meaningless. 

He slowly moves, gently rolling onto his side next to you, pulling you in close to him. 

“Why didn’t you let go of my hands?” you ask him, pressing a kiss to his chest. “You know I hate that.”

He only laughs, “Serves you right,” he says softly, kissing you once more. “For being such a big bag of dicks earlier to me.”

You know he’s right, and he was getting you back for the way you were to him and you totally understand that. “Fine.” You say, and you bury your head against his chest, arms wrapping around him. You both lie there in a comfortable silence for a while, his fingers raking gently through your head and when you think about it, this affectionate side seems so uncharacteristic. But you don’t question it. You enjoy this big teddy bear of a lover you have. But while it wasn’t quite the angry sex you’d hoped for, it was still good. But you know he’s feeling decidedly less angry; you can feel his body relaxing as you hold one another.

“Till, I love you.” You tell him, ignoring how unmasculine that makes you feel. 

“I know,” he says softly, pressing a kiss to your forehead. “I love you too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have pilfered this from a lot of other fics I've written because I'm actually brain dead and there's one chapter I want to get to in which I have to post like... eight more chapters (okay, not eight but like another two)
> 
> Anyway, sorry for this. I hope this is okay. I hope you enjoy it.


	6. Heresy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _You liked how the weight of the wings pulls the skin on his chest taut across his pecs and therefore gave you the most spectacular view of him. But despite his struggle, he seemed to carry them well, and they looked perfect, as if those wings were meant to be placed upon his shoulders for all eternity._

“But if He doesn’t exist, and there’s no such thing as heaven and hell, then where do we go when we die?”

“We’re just grey matter. We go back to the earth where we came from and we become worm food. Simple.”

“But, no… Wait, so you’re saying there’s literally nothing, no higher being?”

“No, what I’m saying is that while it’d be ignorant to think that humans on earth are the only living creatures in the whole vast landscape of the universe, I don’t think any of them could be considered God. Does that make sense?”

“No… Is there a God, or isn’t there?”

“The point is is that we don’t know. There’s no conclusive evidence to say “yes. That is God. There he is. Look at that beard.”

You take a stop to look up at him for a moment, quizzing him as you stare. “But isn’t the point of religions that we don’t know if God exists but we have faith?”

“Richard, why are you questioning this?”

You look up at him before pressing a gentle kiss to his chest. “We’ve just never properly spoken to each other about this sort of stuff.” You move to sit up, wrapping the sheets around your waist. “I mean, in all the deep, drunken philosophical conversations we’ve ever had, religion has never been something we’ve discussed. I mean, we’ve even discussed Hitler verses Stalin at great length but never God and the Great Spaghetti Monster in the sky.” You tell him and he moves to silence you with a kiss. 

“Richard, stop over-thinking it.” He tells you, kissing you once more. “I’m going to have a shower.” You lie back down and you watch him. He stands and picks up a towel to wrap around his hips before digging in his bag for his toiletries. It always amazes you that seeing as the two of you have been at this for god knows how long now, he still covers up whenever you’re not having sex, and even covers up when you are sometimes. You’re always surprised that he can be so free with his body on stage (remembering back to that one Halloween where he just wrapped his dick in black duct-tape and went out on stage in that) but in the bedroom in front of you, he’s always so conservative. You also don’t understand why, because when it’s just you two, or even just the six of you, or possibly more, you’re more than happy to parade around in your birthday suit. 

“Till,” you say softly before he disappears, “Why must you always cover that cute butt whenever you wander around? Are you not comfortable being naked around me? Because, I can tell you, I’ve literally seen _everything_ before.” You tell him, laughing softly, turning onto your side. “And let me also tell you, that I like seeing it…” You grin, “Come back to bed for like ten more minutes and then we’ll shower together. Come on. Till… Please… Come on…” you ask him.

“I want to get clean, Richard. I’m going shower now…”

“Till, you didn’t answer my first question…”

He sighs and turns back to look at you. “I’m going for a shower.”

“Come back! Till, please! Come back!”

He closes the door and you hear the shower turn on. You decide the best thing to do is to go back to sleep for a while, seeing as neither of you have to be up anytime soon. 

When you wake a few hours later, he’s hunched over his desk, scribbling furiously in his notebooks. He must have gotten a burst of creativity while you were asleep. Or took the opportunity of you being incapacitated and unable to speak to him. You watch him through bleary eyes for a while. He’s shirtless, and you can see the muscles in his back straining against his skin as he writes, the movements so minute that you’d miss them if you blinked. You watch the broad expanse of his shoulder hunch forward over his frame. And you can imagine the look of sheer and absolute concentration that’s on his face. You’ve seen it a million times and it never ceases to make you laugh; his brows furrowed so close they’re almost knitted together, his eyes sharp and focused, moving quickly across the page, following his hand, the way he mouths the words he’s writing down so he doesn’t miss any because his brain is working faster than his hand can keep up. You know that’s the current look on his face and you can’t help but let out a little laugh, rolling onto your back. 

“So you’re awake then…” He says softly, his back still turned to you. You see him take a deep breath, his back expending in the same way his chest does. 

“Don’t mind me… I’ll just quietly enjoy the view…” You tell him, curling up in the sheets. His shoulders are actually your favourite physical parts of him, and you love looking at them, touching them, being near them, resting your head on them, and biting them. Basically you just love them. You’ve yet to meet another person whose shoulders conjure up such impure thoughts in your mind as his do. You’re not even sure why you they do this to you; it’s not as if shoulders are a particularly sexual place on the body. But you figure that possibly because they sort of frame his whole body, for a start, and as much as you hate it when people say it, he has got the most masculine frame you’ve ever seen, and it starts at the shoulders. You think back to when you first encountered him; the swimmer from Schwerin. In fact, you think back to the first time you saw him getting out of any body of water (probably a lake somewhere) and you watched the muscles in his shoulders and back work to pull him effortlessly through the water. Maybe that’s why. Maybe that’s why you like looking at them so much. You think about how he looks when he carries those ridiculous metal wings on his back for Engel, and you can’t help but laugh to yourself when you remember him struggling to even stand up the first time he put them on. But they suited him in the most depraved way possible. You liked how the weight of the wings pulls the skin on his chest taut across his pecs and therefore gave you the most spectacular view of him. But despite his struggle, he seemed to carry them well, and they looked perfect, as if those wings were meant to be placed upon his shoulders for all eternity. And you instantly become aware that you’ve spent a very, very large amount of time thinking about his shoulders and nothing else.

“Stop it.” He says softly, as if he knew what you were thinking. “Stop staring at me. I can feel your eyes burning into the back of my head. It’s unsettling.” 

You laugh then, slowly sitting yourself up. “Fine.” You say, getting to your feet. “I didn’t even want to look at you anyway.”

That, at least, draws a laugh from him, and he reaches for your wrist as you walk past him for the bathroom. He pulls you back towards him and presses a deep kiss to your lips. “Go and take a shower because you smell like an arse hole.” He whispers against your lips, laughing softly, and he gently lets go of your arm. 

“Thanks, dick.” You say softly, turning to head to the bathroom.

“Only your closest and most intimate friend would tell you, Richard.”

“Friend…” you repeat softly, turning to look at him, “friend…” you say again as you look at him.

“Partner?” he asks, a puzzled look on his face. “I’m hardly going to call you my boyfriend, am I?”

“Well it all means the same thing in German, I guess…” you laugh, closing the bathroom door behind you.

When you re-emerge, clean and shaven, you feel a little better than you did earlier. But he’s lying on the bed in his pants, reading that fucking book that he’s been trying to read for at least eight and a half years now but distractions keep happening and he never gets to finish it. He looked up at you and you crawl forward on the bed to kiss him softly. 

“In answer to your earlier question about nudity, I need to ask you another question. Why are you so comfortable with being naked?” he asks, closing his book and putting it down. 

“God made us this way, why change that?” you tell him, grinning as you sit yourself down, only a towel covering your dignity. “Only really around you though. You’ve seen literally every single inch of my body, and you’ve even been inside it. What the hell do I really have to hide?” you laugh, and he nods his head in agreement. 

“You mean they flying spaghetti monster brought you down to earth from space as a wriggling mass of nudity?” he laughs, slowly moving to crawl on top of you, kissing you gently as you lie down.

“The short answer… is yes.” You tell him between kisses.

“What’s the long answer?” he stops, staring down at you. 

“There isn’t one. Don’t stop kissing me.” You demand, fingers gripping around the back of his beck, pulling him down to kiss you more. You’ve moved past the point of caring how effeminate he makes you. That’s between the two of you, and no one else. 

He gently runs his hands over your skin and you feel it lighting up as he begins to touch you. You crave this contact with him more than anything. But you slowly roll him over so he’s lying on his back, pressing hot, wet kisses against his skin, biting over his chest. You just want to put your mouth all over him. He tastes clean, his skin free of the salty taste it normally has because he’s showered all the sweat from himself, and you’ve done the same. But neither of you have any problem with getting all sweaty again. That’s the beauty of being at home; it doesn’t really matter what you do because there’s no time constraints. 

Your eager lips travel further down his torso, nipping gently at willing flesh as you kiss and lick and bite your way further, hands exploring well known skin as you move between his thighs, first taking him into your hand before wrapping your lips around his erection. You just want to worship him like he deserves. And while your earlier discussion of religion still plays on your mind, you can’t help but think that it all doesn’t matter, seeing as the two of you are in this morally compromising relationship. But you don’t care. If there is a God, you’ll find him at the bottom of this man’s heart, that’s what you know to be true. And worship false idols all you please, because you have to worship the man in front of you because no one has this kind of control over you with such minimal effort. _He must be some kind of deity_.

He grips your hair and pulls you away from him though, and he sits up, pressing wet, hot kisses against your lips, and the two of you turn so you lie on your back once more. If there’s one thing Till is good at, it’s fucking. He’s good at many things, but this is one of his talents that you appreciate more than the rest. You slowly run your hands over his sides, touching his skin. He is like a human radiator, and you’ve said it before but you don’t know anyone who’s as warm as he is. 

You watch him reach over you, leaning up to press whatever kisses you can to him before he sits back on his knees. He likes being on top. But you know that he also likes receiving, which is good for you because sometimes you just get this feeling that you need to put your dick into something, and he’s often willing. But right now, you want to feel him. He slowly pushes his fingers into you and you grip the top of his arms at the intrusion, groaning softly as he curls them against you. You look up and see that he’s watching you, and you know that you’re a mess underneath him, but he like you that way. You’re begging for him not to stop. You have no idea how he makes you feel this way, but he really only has to look at you sometimes and you’re a quivering mess on the ground. 

He slowly withdraws his fingers, sorting himself out with quick, deft hands before moving over you once more, slowly pushing himself forward. He can be so tender sometimes, as he waits for you to adjust, moving so slowly it’s almost painful. But his hips begin to move faster, and you grow more and more desperate for a release. And as if he’s read your mind, his hand takes hold of you and he coaxes your orgasm from you, his thrusts moving faster than his hand, teasing you. As you spill over his hand and onto your abdomen, you feel this shock wave roll through your body, causing your back to arch into him, every muscle in your body feeling what he’s doing to you, the pleasure he’s giving you. And it doesn’t take long for your body to bring him to the edge, pulling him over with you, his hips juddering to a stop, moving erratically as he rides out the last waves of his orgasm against you.

And as the two of you lie there, him resting against your chest, you gently trace your fingers over his shoulders and down across his shoulder blades where you’re certain his wings are supposed to be. You know he’s some kind of angel that fell from heaven by accident, but you’re glad you’re both here in this moment right now. Regardless of heaven or hell, you wouldn’t change anything for the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I just got back from Amsterdam and I've had a sudden burst of creativity, so hopefully that'll mean something more frequent.
> 
> But also, don't count on it because I go back to work on Monday and have a shit ton of stuff to do before then, as well as after then.
> 
> I'm not making sense! I hope you enjoy this.


	7. Violence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Are you okay, Richard?” he asks you, and you feel his fingers gently running through your hair._
> 
>  
> 
> _“What in the ever living fuck is happening?” you ask, attempting to sit up._
> 
>  
> 
> _“Yep, guys. He’s fine. He’s absolutely fine.”_

_He is a river of boiling blood and fire._

You wake suddenly, lurching forward in your seat as something catches you behind the eyes. You dream fades away fairly quickly as you sit back. Your heart is beating at the speed of light and you are terribly aware of every single inch of your skin; it’s tingling in the most horrible way possible. You can feel the throb of the bruise on your face as you sit back, the blood pumping hard against the swelling in the socket, making you feel a little dizzy. You take a few deep breaths and become aware of your surroundings. _We’re on the bus. We’re going to the next city. We’re safe and sound._ you tell yourself, sitting perfectly still, your fingers digging deep into the arms of the seat you’re in. You’re struggling to calm yourself down.

Your hearing seems to return to you, as the blood stops rushing in your ears and you can hear a faintly familiar song playing over the speakers of the bus. You can hear the windshield wipers squeak across the glass back and forth, pushing tirelessly at the rain to attempt to make vision better for the driver and failing miserably. You feel so disorientated.

_I don’t remember getting on this bus._

You sit up, feeling your shirt clinging to your sweat soaked chest, dragging across the skin on your arms. It makes you feel sick. You wipe your nose on the back of your hand and then rub your fist into your one good eye. 

“The swelling is going down nicely.” You hear Till’s voice say calmly, and he holds out his hand with two more white pills. You’re still a bit dazed, and you look up at him in bewilderment. “They’re paracetamol, take them, for the pain.” He tells you, pushing his hand forward slightly towards you, offering you a bottle of water to go with them. 

“I don’t remember getting on the bus.” You say plainly, taking the pills from his hand before shoving them into your mouth. “Why can’t I see out of my eye? Till, what happened to me?” You can smell him on you. He’s wrapped one of his jumpers around you to keep you warm. You can smell the dizzying mix of aftershave and cigarettes in the fibres, which normally give you a kind of homesickness for him but now they’re just turning your stomach. You down the water, drinking and drinking, your mouth feeling lick you’ve been licking carpet for an entire evening. Your head is throbbing; your neck is stiff; your back has tensed. “What is going on?”

“You don’t remember?”

“Not even a little bit. I had the most terrible nightma-…”

“Richard you got into a terrible fight with Paul last night…” Till explains, frowning softly as he puts himself in the seat next to you. “He’s got a broken nose, but he really went at you. To be fair to him, you were pretty savage with your words last night.”

“I had a fight with Paul?”

“Yes! That’s what I just said. You said some nasty things to Paul last night. You got very personal with your insults to which he punched you in the face, and rightly so. You hit him back and he went for you.” Till sighs softly, reaching around for the ice pack which sat in the fridge next to him. “I think you should apologise.”

“What were we fighting about? What did I say to him?”

“It doesn’t matter right now, but all you need to know is that you were wrong.”

“Oh my god. It wasn’t a dream… Where is he?”

“Richard, I think you’re literally the last person he’d want to see right now. I’m surprised he’s still on the tour.”

“Where is he, Till? Please?”

Till sighs and gets to his feet. “He’s in the back keeping away from you.”

“Wait… How did I get on the bus? What happened?”

Till laughs then, taking hold of your hands, “I carried you. You wouldn’t wake up and we had to leave, so I carried you.”

“Thank you.” You say softly, and as you get up, you press a gentle kiss to his cheek. “I owe you.” 

“I’d keep that in mind. You might need me to come and rescue you in about ten minutes…”

You still feel incredibly dizzy, and you grip everything possible to keep yourself steady as you slowly walk to the back of the bus where Paul is sitting in silence. He’s reading the same Russian novel he’s been trying to read for the past nine weeks, and you’re aware that you’ve not only been a monumental dickbag to him, but also you’re disturbing his reading time.

“Paul?”

“Get the fuck away from me.” He doesn’t even look up, and through your one eye you can see the bruise across the bridge of his nose.

“Paul, I need to apologise.”

“You need to get the fuck away from me.”

“Paul, come on, hear him out. He doesn’t even remember!” Till chimes in, crowding in behind Richard, gripping his shirt to keep him steady. Paul looks up at Till’s words. 

“Don’t remember? You don’t fucking remember?” Paul growls. “You don’t even have a decency to know what you’re apologising for?”

“Till wouldn’t tell me!” You try to explain, feeling your heart sinking to your feet. 

“I can’t fucking believe you. I mean, how fucking dare you Richard!” Paul gets to his feet now, and his normal smiley face has turned incredibly dark. “Fuck you Richard. Stop the fucking bus, I’m going home!”

“No! No wait Paul stop!” You beg him, “Please, let’s talk about this!”

“No. Fuck you Richard. I am done with you and this fucking band.”

Your dream may have deserted you but there’s still an immeasurable amount of shame in your gut, burrowing through my system with as much energy as possible. You feel guilty and you’re not even sure what for. You feel disgusting but you can’t remember why. The last thing you remember was getting to that bar last night and taking a few shots of tequila. That was it. You feel dizzy once more, swaying on your feet and you fall forward, collapsing to your knees as your stomach decides now is a good time to alleviate some of the nausea you’re feeling. You manage to grab the bin in time as you empty the contents of your stomach into it, thanking the lord that it wasn’t on the carpet in this bus. I have a terrible flashback then, of lying in Till’s arms, blood everywhere, sobbing hysterically over Paul. You look up, and see Till has a hold of Paul, attempting to make the situation better between the two of you. 

_”Look, you didn’t see the state of him last night, Paul. After you left and I took him home he was hysterical. Even in that state he regretted everything.”_

You feel the bus start to roll forward slowly, and it hasn’t pulled over to let Paul off yet, which is a bonus. You have no idea what’s going on but everything is going blurry. 

_”I swear to God Dietrich if you do not get him out of my face within the next 30 seconds I will kill him. Now GET OFF OF ME!”_

“Wait, stop… Paul.” They both look round at you. 

“Oh shit. He doesn’t look good.” Comes another voice, and you feel a warm hand against the nape of your neck. “Richard, what’s the matter?”

“I can’t see…” You say softly, your vision turning black very slowly. “I’m going to vomit.”

You hear someone shout for the driver to get you to the nearest hospital. 

“N-no. I don’t need a hospital. I’m fine. Paul, please listen to me!” You make it to your feet and you stumble forward, Till catching you. What the hell did Paul do to you last night? “Wait, stop the bus. Please, pull over I need to get out.” You say, beginning to feel panic coming once more. You start to retch, feeling that all-too-familiar bubbling coming up from your stomach. The bus comes to a halt and you throw yourself through the doors into the frigid wind and rain. You fall then to your knees once more, this time you feel the sin rip under your jeans and you feel the gravelly ground pushing deep into your hands. It is freezing, but you’re sweating so much that you feel like you’ve been swimming with Till. The rain is adding to that and the thin fabric of your t-shirt is clinging to your body. You retch once more, groaning as you grip your stomach. 

_”You know that what he said was way out of character! He wasn’t himself, Paul! Come on, you must know that!”_ You hear Till shouting over the wind. There is a terrible discomfort in your stomach as it clenches violently, almost unexpectedly, and it erupts through your nose, your mouth and onto the ground below you. The heat of your bile-soaked breath turns to mist in the air before you. Another wave of nausea hits, as the first of the dry-heaving begins, and then another burning, acrid expulsion hits you.

_”I don’t care! He was just drunk!”_

_”Oh give over, Paul! We’ve all done enough drugs to know that he was off his tits on something!”_

“I didn’t take anything.” You say quietly, slowly attempting to sit up. “I d-didn’t take anything.” You stutter. You feel a large, warm hand plant itself on the back of your neck before hooking under your arm and pulling you to your feet.

“What did you say?”

“I didn’t take anything…” You slur, looking up at Till. “I d-don’t remember taking anything…”

“Well this is definitely a terrible come-down from something. This isn’t a tequila hangover…” Oliver says as he inspects Richard’s face. “Are you sure you didn’t take anything?”

“Perfectly sure! Paul, list-…” You stop, retching as you lean against Till. “Paul I’m so sorry.” You groan, unable to stop yourself retching once more, nothing surfacing. You look up at Till and you can feel the hot burn of tears stinging your dry eyes. “I want to go home.” You tell him, feeling pathetic. All of those feelings of inadequacy come flooding back to you. “P-please take me home.”

“We need to take him to a hospital. I think it’s a combination of concussion and being drugged. This isn’t a hangover.” 

You look over and see Paul frowning. “I’m sorry Paul.” You tell him once more, groaning softly, “I don’t even know what I said but I’m sorry.”

“Alright, let’s get him to a hospital, for goodness sake.” Paul says finally, taking you under the other arm to help Till get you back onto the bus. The others are watching in a kind of grim fascination. They’re also unsure of what’s going on, but they want to know desperately. 

“I feel like I’m about to die.”

“You’ll be fine. Here. Have some water.” Till hands you another bottle of water, gently pushing your hair from your face. You know Paul helped you back to this position but you desperately need to know if he forgives you. You want to know what you said but you also don’t want to know how vile you were. You remember promising yourself that you’d be good the night before, to not become an absolute mess, but here we are.

When you wake next, you’re lying in an uncomfortably warm room, and as you try to bend your arm, you wince as there’s something sticking in it. What has Till done to you this time?

 _“He’s awake!”_ you hear Till’s voice say, and then you feel a crow gathering around you. “Are you okay, Richard?” he asks you, and you feel his fingers gently running through your hair. 

“What in the ever living fuck is happening?” you ask, attempting to sit up.

“Yep, guys. He’s fine. He’s absolutely fine.” Till says, sighing with relief. They help you to sit up, and when your eyes finally come to, you see Paul sitting at the end of your bed, looking rather sheepishly at you. 

“They said you’d been drugged. Something similar to date rape…” Paul said softly. “I just… You were being so personal. I didn’t know what was happening because I was really drunk too. You just started leathering on me for no reason!”

“Paul, I don’t even know what I said to you.” You admit, swallowing hard as Schneider props you up with another pillow. 

“I don’t think you want to know…” Came Flake’s voice. “I’m going to grab a cup of coffee.”

“C-can you get me one?” you ask.

“No. Only water.” He frowns, heading to the door, and disappeared with Oliver and Schneider into the corridor. 

You look back at the other two and sigh. “You hit me really hard.”

“They said you’ve got a slight concussion… Paul literally beat the daylights out of you. I didn’t know you had it in you! It took both Doom and Oliver to pull you off him!”

“Well you did insult both my daughter and my mother in the same breath…” Paul said softly. “So I had to show you all the reasons you were wrong.”

They all laughed at that, and Till pressed a gentle kiss to the top of Richard’s head. He appreciated this, because it wasn’t often that Till was affectionate in front of others, and it felt nice to have their relationship validated in front of their friends sometimes. 

“I’m going to grab some food, do you want anything?” he asked Paul.

“No, I’m good thanks.”

“Can I have a sandwich or something?”

“No. Only water…” Till repeated Flake’s words, pressing once more kiss to his forehead. “Paul, please don’t hurt him anymore. I let you last night because he deserved it, but I’ll end you if you touch him once more, understood?”

There was silence for a moment, and Paul looked a little sheepish under Till’s gaze. 

“I promise.” He said softly, “Not unless he deserves it.”

They smiled and Till left, leaving the two of you on your own. 

“Are you okay?” You ask, looking over Paul’s face, forcing yourself to sit up to look closer at the bruise.

“You hit hard.” He said softly, “That was one punch.”

“Till said you’d broken your nose.”

“I think so, yes…”

“Well at least you’re not concussed.” You tell him.

“At least you’ve got the most terrifying body guard of all of us. He let me get a couple of hits in but then he made this noise and I knew I’d fucked up. He’s terrifying, I’m telling you.”

You laugh at that. “Yeah, you wouldn’t want to be on the end of a beating from Till…”

“Thank god it doesn’t happen often.” Paul sighs.

They sit in silence for a moment, awkwardly unsure of what to say to one another.

“I’m sorry I said all that stuff. I didn’t know.”

“I know you didn’t. It’s fine. I know now anyway. It was a little out of character.”

“It’s okay…” You tell him. You both laugh and it feels better already.

You stay in the hospital a while longer before they discharge you and you can get back to touring. You’re weak but you’re okay.

You get back to the hotel with Till and curl up in bed with him.

“Who the fuck drugged me, anyway?” you ask, wrapping your arms around him. You love lying close to him, and feeling as dizzy as you are, he’s making you feel incredibly safe.

“I have no idea. But if I find them, I’m going to kill them.” He replies, kissing your forehead. “No one’s going to do anything like that to you again, I promise.”

“I love you Till…” You tell him, kissing him properly, “so much.”

“I love you too.” He tells you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I FINALLY GOT SOME INSPIRATION FOR THIS!
> 
> Thanks guys for all your words of encouragement recently! Thank you <3


	8. Fraud

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“You’re angry at me for something Dream-Me said?” he laughs_

_The first blow is always the worst._

_You feel the crippling pain pounding in your head as you feel him land another punch to your right eye. You feel sick to your stomach and you attempt to call out to him but find your voice is stuck in your throat. He punches you once more and you stagger back to the ground, unable to keep yourself on your feet anymore. You can’t see for the swelling in one of your eyes and you feel dizzy. You finally manage to drag yourself to your feet and see you’re at the end of a long, dark corridor. You begin to walk, trying to get yourself as far away from him as you can. You can feel the blood pouring down your face, clogging your mouth and nose, making it difficult to breathe. You splutter your way down the hallway and stop, unable to stop yourself throwing up as you walk, hearing him stomping down behind you. You attempt to run but it’s futile. You hate this. You can’t seem to get out of this at all. And then comes another punch, straight to the back of your head and you feel it reverberate in the front of your skull and everything goes black, but you can still hear everything. One of your biggest fears is losing your sight, and when all you can do is hear what’s happening around you, you’re absolutely terrified._

_You feel yourself being dragged around, and you can feel your hair being pulled. You grip at the fist balled in the strands and you feel incredibly helpless. There’s nothing you can do to stop this from happening; you’re totally at a loss. You slowly feel your sight coming back, first in large monochrome blobs, and you feel an arm gripping around your neck. You’re pulled close to a familiar torso and you feel so weak. You can tell you’re in a dimly lit room now and you can feel his arms pulling you up towards him. Usually this embrace is warm, and loving, and heart-felt, but now it‘s aggressive and painful and he’s definitely attempting to kill you._

_You’ve only truly had your arse handed to you a few times, and only one of those times was by Till Lindemann, and this time, you know it’s him once more and he’s really giving it to you. The first time he beat the shit out of you, you are certain you deserved it because you’d driven him to that point. And you knew he felt terrible; Till has the red mist descending and then he loses control of himself. You know this time though, it isn’t your fault. He finally let’s go of you and you feel dizzy, blood rushing to your head. You drag yourself to your feet, and he gives you enough of a chance to stand before coming at you once more, and you know that you need defend yourself otherwise he’s going to kill you. You might not be one hundred percent sure of the reason for this anger, but you know that it needs to end. He charges towards you, and you throw a punch at him, catching him somewhere between his jaw and his neck and you throw your entire weight into it. You watch him stagger back and splutter, unable to take any air in as you’ve winded him._

_You take the opportunity to throw another punch, hitting him square in the face and he doubles over, to which you kick him in the shoulder where he’s bent and knock him off his feet. You feel victorious for a moment, and take triumph that you’ve managed to knock him down, and you make sure to get a few extra digs in at him before taking your leave, running as fast as you can. You’ve always been fairly athletic, but the smoking too much recently has really gotten to you and you find yourself getting more and more out of breath. You stop a moment, turning to see him directly behind you, as if he’d been waiting but he’s wearing a strange kind of uniform which looks vaguely familiar to you, but you can’t quite place it. You’re pushed back against the wall, and a cloth bag is placed over your head and your hands are cuffed before you even have time to register what’s going on._

_”Please. Till. Stop! You’re scaring me! Please stop!” you beg as you’re dragged by your bound hands back to the start again._

_You are stood with your feet shoulder-width apart. You are stood about eight to ten inches away from the wall, facing it. Your hands are straight up above your head and you are leaning against the wall, your palms flat against the concrete, bent ever so slightly forward. Your body is starting to hurt all over and you’re unsure as to what is going on, but as Till had explained to you before he allowed you to see, if you moved, he’d kill you. This was terrible reminiscent of your times in the eastern block and you wanted it to end now. Why was he doing this to you? What had you done? You feel his presence close to you, and you recognise the uniform he wears, the Stasi uniform and at that moment, you realise you’re dreaming._

_“You’ve betrayed me.” He hisses against your ear._

_“I need to wake up.”_

_“You fucking cunt.” He growls._

_“I need to wake up.” Your voice grows louder._

_“You betrayed me and you betrayed all of us.”_

_“I need to wake up.”_

_“How could you do this to us Richard? After everything I did for you. After everything we did for you.”_

_“I need to wake up.”_

_“You’re never fucking leaving here Richard! You’re never leaving again! If you’re down here where no one can find you, you can’t betray anyone anymore! Fucking Emigrate, Richard. Fuck off.” He growls, and you feel a tight pair of arms grip you around the middle, you can feel his weight bearing down on your aching muscles. “You talentless fuck.”_

At this moment, your eyes shoot open but the vice like grip on your torso. You attempt to scramble away, falling to the floor and crawl as far away from the body holding you as you can. You’re terrified. You back yourself up against a wall and look around, praying that you can fight off whatever was holding you, and then you hear his voice and it strikes fear into your belly. But it’s different this time. His voice is soothing and calming and you open your eyes wide to see him slowly coming towards you, crawling across the floor at you.

“It’s okay Richard,” he says softly, calmly, “It was just a nightmare. It’s okay.” He says softly, kneeling before you. “I’m here, it’s okay. It was only a dream.”

You search his face, looking to see if he’s any different to the person in your dream. There’s no bruises or scars on him that you’d left from attempting to defend yourself, there’s no uniform, only his bare chest and his pants that he’d been sleeping in. His skin is warm and soft and you reach out to touch it, making sure he’s real and that he’s here with you. And you can’t help yourself. You fall into it and you sob against him. You’ve not had a nightmare that terrifying in such a long time that you’re unsure of how to deal with it. You’re coated in a sheen of cold sweat, you’re shivering and you feel more exhausted than when you went to bed. And all he does it hold you.

“Shhh.” He hushes you, gently wiping away your tears. “It’s okay, I’m here.” He soothes you, manoeuvring himself so he’s sitting more comfortably for you to crawl into him. “It’s okay. I’m here Richard, I’m here.”

You don’t know how long the two of you stay on the floor next to the bed, but at some point Till has moved so you’re lying down with him and he’s pulled the sheets around the both of you. His arms are still holding you perfectly still and you feel a lot more at ease now than you did when you woke. 

“Would you like some hot chocolate? The sugar will probably do you good.” He says softly, looking down at you in his arms and you feel intense shame that a man your age has cried over a silly dream which you know would never be real. You nod up at him and the two of you slowly move to head down to the kitchen. As you stand, he picks up the sheets and wraps them around your shoulders, pressing a soft kiss to your forehead. You’ve always found it fascinating that someone as intimidating as Till can be as caring and loving as this. You take a seat at the kitchen table while he busies himself making you something sugary to drink. You can’t help but laugh as you see him pour a little rum into the mix while he waits for some milk to warm on the stove. 

You know it was only a dream, but it felt incredibly real. You’ve experienced Till’s anger, and you’re talking about his real anger, not a little bit pissed off, like intense murderous rage which could legitimately result in death. And that was exactly what it was like. You stare off into the distance, thinking of the stark difference between Dream-Till and the real Till shuffling around in front of you. He places a large steaming mug of hot chocolate down in front of you and you can smell the alcohol coming from the mug, but you don’t complain. You take a hearty sip, and the warmness soaks through you, washing away any fears that had settled in your system.

“What were you dreaming about?” He said softly. “Who was it?”

“You.” You tell him plainly. “But it was only a dream, it doesn’t matter.” You sip at your drink to punctuate your sentence, as if to say “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Hmmm….” He says softly, leaning down to press a soft kiss to your lips. “Well, I know I’m fairly terrifying, but I promise it was just a dream.” He reassures you. You feel a little more at ease, feeling your anxiety drifting slowly away. But it isn’t going quickly enough. You look up at him and he looks tired. And you feel guilty because you know you did this to him. “You were taking about betraying someone?” He asks softly, “I’m sorry, I know you don’t want to talk but that’s what woke me.” And you remember his comments to you right before you woke up. 

“Well you called me a talentless fuck so I’m a little angry at you right now.” You explain, sipping at your drink once more. He laughs softly, and watches you.

“You’re angry at me for something Dream-Me said?” he laughs, “Well you’re not a talentless fuck. I know this. Why would I work with a talentless fuck?!” he laughs, taking your hand. “Oh Richard I love you.” He gets to his feet. “Come on, I’m going back to bed. I’d appreciate if you came with me seeing as you’ve got the sheets.”

You nod and finish your drink, feeling the warm flush of the rum filling your senses. You take his offered hand and wander back to bed with him, crawling up the bed to curl up in his arms. You feel needy and pathetic but you know that being just the two of you, it doesn’t really matter. You trust him explicitly to ever tell anyone and you know he wouldn’t. 

He gently cups your cheeks and presses a reassuring kiss to your lips. “You’re the most talented fuck I know.” He smiles, pulling you close into his arms. This is what you needed. You know he’s always chase the terrible thoughts in your head away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this chapter actually has nothing to do with fraud but is kind of more to do with Richard's possible underlying guilt and feelings of his own betrayal of the guys for starting a side-project. So there we go.


	9. Treachery

               It takes all your strength to keep yourself from bashing his head in. As you drag him into your hotel room, you slam the door behind you as soon as you drop him. You can barely recognise him when he’s fucked up like this. It feels like he’s been swapped with some kind of doppelgänger, and it makes everything between the two of you seem fake, seem like incredibly hard work. It makes your life so difficult because he’s not the man you remember him to be. He’s trashed. He’s drunk, there’s evidence of cocaine smeared across his face. You’re not exactly the most sober yourself, either, but you cannot begin to comprehend all the sensitive issues of your relationship and how enraged it makes you feel right now. With what he’s done, how he’s betrayed you, it feels like you’re trying to untangle a thousand twisted knots in your heart and you don’t even know where to fucking start.

               “What the fuck is wrong with you?” you shout, and that sounds like a good place to begin in your mind.

               “Fuck you!” he shouts back, and he’s becoming emotional. He’s determined to prove to you that he’s not _that drunk_ though you can see, quite plainly, that he’s a complete mess. But you know telling him how much of a mess he is would be a spiteful remark on his person and you’d be shitting all over his feelings right now. He’s not keen on being locked here with you right now though, so he makes for the door quickly, and you manage to block his grand exit strategy by pushing his drunk ass back to the bed. You watch him then pick up one of the empty bottles of beer from the bedside smashes it, thrusting the broken glass in your direction. It happens almost in slow motion, that he stumbles forward and misses you. He cries out in anger, and it’s difficult for you to comprehend how one person can transition from the person you know to this bizarrely violent human being, who’s acts are so out of character.  
  
               _It’s only the cocaine_ you tell yourself, _it’s just the cocaine._ But you know this isn’t true because he’s cheated. The cocaine didn’t make him cheat on you. _  
  
_               He pulls himself to his feet and swings at you once more, and in reflex you reach out and manage to grab a fistful of his hair around the back of his head before the glass digs into your arm. You use all your weight to force him back to the bed, pushing him down. You regret the decision as you shove him backwards, his head connecting with the hard-wood bedframe. He groans, curling up in the sheets and drops the piece of bottle to the floor. You know he’s in a bad way and this violence is making it worse but you cannot remove this anger you’re feeling towards him for what he’s done.  
  
               You’re both smeared with blood, small pieces of glass covering your skin but the several shots of liquor running through your veins is taking the edge off the pain in your skin. This is what has become of your relationship; your friendship. You’ve subdued him, but right now this is the only way for you to stop him from attempting to kill you. Ultimately you’ve done nothing wrong, but that’s not how he’s feeling right now. At this moment in time you’re his worst enemy. He hates you; at least for the next few hours, especially if you don’t draw more blood first. Any time you try to draw back, or to walk away from the ridiculousness that is your relationship, he provokes the same old shit that draws you back in. You cannot help but forgive him whenever he fucks up. He always has this apology ready, and you always get sucked back in, unable to stop yourself. You have to admit that you love him, and that’s why you allow him to keep treating you the way he does. But this time, he’s taken it a step too far. He’s endangered himself, and the band, and he’s betrayed you beyond all belief, and you’re angry. It always ends up this way; aggression, brutality. You’re too familiar with the fear and intimidation he inspires in others, but it all falls short of working on you when he’s not armed or threatening your life. A broken bottle is nothing. If it had been a knife and a gun, then it’d be something completely different. He has this tough-guy-attitude, but you can see the cracks in his image. Once you’ve been as intimate with someone as you are with him, you know that things change; you see them for who they really are.  
  
               You crawl on top of the bed, and at this point the red mist has descended. You are angry. You crawl up his body, and you feel dizzy and warm in the face, through anger and embarrassment that you’re back here like this again. Between the drugs, the booze and the weight he lost through shitty diet on tour and not looking after himself, it’s not difficult to restrain him. He might be angry and aggressive on cocaine but you’ve got sheer size and strength on your side. For some reason, when it’s just you holding him down, it stuns him into passivity, like a deer in headlights. You use your forearms to pin down the tops of his arms, grabbing fistfuls of his hair, something which used to be shared between you in intimacy, not a way of controlling him, holding him in place, forcing him to look at you.  
  
               “ _Was she worth it?_ ” you snarl, hissing into his face. You’re passed the point of caring if you upset him anymore. He’s been running through two different personalities and it’s been driving you crazy; one on a path to antagonise and agitate you as much as humanly possible, and the other completely passive and clueless as a victim of whatever violence the first personality provokes.  
  
               “ _Get off of me!”_ he screams up at you, and it’s loud, screaming at the top of his lungs; any ounce of threat in his voice has been replace with sheer panic. He’s stuck now. He cannot escape.  
  
               “ _Was she better than me? Huh?!”_ your vision starts to blur, and you’re blind with anger. You aren’t sure at what point you became this irrationally angry but you moan sarcastically into his ear. You want to torment him just as much as he’s tormented you. You know he’s gone into fight-or-flight mode and he actually bites you, grinding your bottom lip between his teeth. In hindsight you believe arms-length is probably the smartest way of confronting him when he’s in this mood. You yelp, gripping his throat with both hands. At first, it’s to subdue him further, to stop him fighting back, but you find yourself squeezing, tighter and tighter, and the breathless scream is out of character for him, quite desperate, but right now, nothing except for white-hot rage will register in your brain. He kicks, limbs flailing, knees connecting with whatever they can of you, trying to slap at you with his hands but soon the attempts to hurt you turn to him attempting to pry your hands away.  
  
               You let go of his throat, and the dam breaks; the floodgates are open, and like usual, he gets his way. Your whole body is burning, with loathing, with lust, with a disgust at how you feel right now. You keep him down, gently running your hands over his face, and he’s attempting get you off of him but he’s so weak from fighting you that he cannot properly push himself free of you.   
  
                 “Get off of me!  _Get off of me!_ ” He’s really screaming now; what you thought might have been him screaming before was nothing in comparison to the banshee like sounds emitting from his body.   His panic has changed to urgency. If you had been listening to this from outside the hotel room you’d have believed he was being murdered. He attempts to roll onto his front under you, to make it easier for him to escape but he is unlucky in his attempts. you hold him firm; the blood has left his face. He's no longer desperate to attack you. Instead, it's to get away from you.

               Everything about him has become feral; it's desperate violence and nothing more. It's all so hate-filled, you don't know how much longer you can cope. He's pushing away from you one second and then he's pushing into you. He stares at me; open mouthed, breathing fast, eyes narrowed in what you think could be the same combination of arousal and anger as yours. There's  _something_  animal in his eyes. You guess you already know what's coming, but you go to touch his chest anyway—you can't help it—and he swings a fist at you and actually growls in frustration.  


                 “ _Shit!_ ” Hit full force by his bony knuckles, the cartilage in your ear throbs and rings, and you know you can feel it swelling and turning red. You grab both of his arms and fall forward onto the bed, using your weight to keep him pinned down.  


               “ _Don't fucking touch me! I hate you!_  I fucking hate all of this!” He howls, choking back tears, probably as much delirious as he is speaking truthfully. You try to convince yourself that this isn't him talking, but you’ve reached your breaking point. You really want to walk away and not come back. He's writhing around on his back to get away from everything he just tortured you into, twisting his torso and hissing more cusses at you. You just need him to stop talking. You cover his mouth with both your hands, growling to keep him from chatting. You need him to shut the fuck up.  


               Yelling into your palm, he claws at your arms, digging up your skin under his stubbed finger-nails and leaving raw red behind while he tries to pull your hand off his face. You can just make out the words  _'get off of me'_. He bites you; you can't tell if the wet heat you can feel is from your broken skin or his saliva, but you hold tight.

               He lets your hands go free, so you let go of his mouth—pin his arms to the mattress yet again instead. You can feel him starting to tremble, probably exhausted from twisting to get away.

               “ _Calm down!_ ”  


               “I don't want to fuck you,  _you asshole!_ ” He snarls. It’s kind of upsetting that he thinks all of this is about attempting to get into his pants because you know he’s aware that this is because he’s cheated on you for the fifteenth time in nine months. You know these words are coming from his mouth only to agitate and aggravate you further; he’s trying to break your heart more than he already has. At this point you’re not sure why you’re angry at him, you just expect it now and it’s more just disappointing than anger inducing, or at least it had been until this point.   


               “Go fuck yourself, you _cunt_. I'm perfectly aware!” You laugh in his face, and it’s clear that he’s come to the realisation that he’s losing this battle. “I said, was he good?!”

               He's shaking. He bites his lip and refuses to look at you.

               “ _Leave me alone!_ ” You entertain the idea that you could just leave him now and leave it at that. You could have finished it here but you’re far too hurt to allow that to happen. You’re far too caught up in this aggression, in this anger. Your ego won’t allow you to back down.  


               “Or is this it? You found somebody more of a  _bitch_  than  _you are?_ ” You know you’re being excessively vicious but you cannot stop yourself. You know this is hitting all those insecurities you keep buried deep in your brain, far away from anyone so they cannot use them to hurt you. There’s a pang of jealousy in your stomach that makes you sick, but you don’t want to stop. You want to make him suffer like he’s made you suffer. You’ve never fought like this with him but maybe this will correct everything.  
  
               You know what you’re saying degrades everything the two of you had together. There was a time, a beautifully short period of time where you were happy with him, and while you’d never really felt that monogamy was something you were good at. But you never felt that you needed to cheat on him, and you didn’t. He whines, drawing it out until it turns into a high pitched growl, and he’s attempting to get an arm free so he can his you again. He wants to get away. He doesn’t want to be here anymore. With that one hateful, hurtful, spiteful remark, you’ve cut through all his facades, and you’ve ripped every intimate experience the two of you have had together in half. You’re trying to get him to look at you, but he won’t. He doesn’t want to look at you. He doesn’t want you to see how hurt he is by your remarks. There are tears streaming down his face now, and he looks pale, hysterical, panicked, like you’ll actually hurt him. Like you could ever hurt him worse than he’s hurt you.  
  
                 “ _Es ist nicht meine Sch— ...Get off._ ” He can't yell anymore. He's hoarse, repeating himself, already begging without the word 'please'; the desperate sound of defeat. You feel a heady rush of dizziness, seeing the defeat in him, and all he wants now is to get himself out of this situation he’s gotten himself into. “ _Get off!”  
  
_                His body goes completely limp—just breathing open-mouthed, lying still with a look of absolute catatonia in every respect while the crocodile tears pour, trying to catch his breath. He’s an animal playing dead; hoping you’ll back off now you’ve done your damage. Not reacting, not coming back at you with something just as awful, just lying there and accepting what you've said—this is way fucking worse than the threats to kill you.  
  
                 “Say 'please'.” This is getting repetitive, and maybe it's partly your fault. You can tell that small request is much larger than two words. You’re asking him to give up that pride he holds so dear and admit defeat. His chest rises and falls faster, as if he’s gearing up for another fight but you know he doesn’t have the energy. You’re annoyed with him now, but more annoyed with yourself for allowing it to get to this point.   
  
               There's silence, at least except for the sound of our breathing and his sobs. The loud rustle of the sheets died with the struggle. There's something way too genuine in the fright and the panic and the crying. You know you’re drunk. You know you've taken it too far. You’re pinning down the person you love—screaming in his face, choking him, shoving your hands over his mouth. He's hitting you, throwing glass at you, threatening to kill you. You're both bleeding; both crying and on the verge of crying.  
  
               With his eyes shut, he takes a deep breath in, then lets it out in the most helpless, exasperated sigh you’ve ever heard.  
  
               “ _Please._ ”  
  
              Like he's officially accepting everything you've said to him.  
  
               Like it's something he feels he already knew.  
  
               You can hardly believe what you’re witnessing, but you move up, face to face with him and stop. You let go of your arms and prop yourself up on your elbows to look at him. You’ve humiliated him, although hardly as much as he’s done to you over the last few months. He refuses to look at you; refuses to even open his eyes. He’s afraid of you now, and it doesn’t feel good. It’s just upsetting you more.  
  
               How the _fuck_ do _you_ feel bad about this? He’s the one that cheated on you!  
  
               You watch him a moment, hoping the fire will kick up in him again and he’ll try to fight you once more. You’ve broken his spirit or something. Drawing strength and whatever patience you can from one deep breath, you stare him straight in the face, waiting for his eyes to open. You want him to look you in the eye. But as time passes, it’s apparent he’s afraid, genuinely scared. He’s restraining himself from sobbing, tears still rolling down his face, hoping that you’ll just disappear.  
  
               The fact remains, you have reduced him to nothing but _a bitch,_ or _your bitch._ You’ve reduced him to nothing but a perverse, submissive weakling and you’ve hit a nerve with him, because while he enjoys that with you, ultimately you’ve never discussed that with anyone outside of your relationship. These are intimate details that the two of you keep to yourself; the intimate dynamics of your relationship and you’ve deemed this to be some pathological defect in him. You both understood what your relationship was and yet you’ve degraded any love or affection between the two of you to nothing but an act of debasement and humiliation at his expense.  
  
               You take a moment to look at him, take in his features once more, unsure as to whether this will be the last time you get to be this close to him. You know you’ve gone too far. Without any aggression left in you, without any violence, you press a kiss to his lip. It’s not particularly affectionate, just a dry peck, and then another, and another, until he returns the kiss, distraught and apologetic. He slowly opens his eyes to look up at you, and there’s an element of relief in his gaze as he sees that you’re you again, and not this violent monster he goaded you into being. You feel sick, sick and disgusted with yourself that you _wanted_ to upset him this much. You feel like you can be gentle with him now, deepening the kiss between the two of you. He tastes like alcohol and blood, but there’s more reservation on his part, but slowly it progresses into deep, lunging, desperate, affectionate kisses, harder and harder until you’re both hyperventilating and unable to continue.  
  
               Unconsciously, you slip your arms around him and draw him closer to you. You’re gulping for air, pressing your forehead against his, brushing your noses, your lips. You hold him and slowly his arms come up to wrap around you, and he buries his face against the crook of your neck. He can’t stop crying now, and you know he’s on some terrible come-down. He attempts to suppress his sobs but he can’t anymore. He doesn’t have the strength.  
  
                 “I'm sorry.” You whisper to him, pressing kisses wherever you can. You hold him, pressing your bodies together. He can barely choke out a few syllables. You repeat it, offering it almost as an explanation. Being like this is familiar and perfect for the two of you as of late; and it makes you euphoric. You feared you had gone too far, but maybe, just maybe, things would be okay. You silently take back the things you had said earlier; there is nothing depraved about your relationship. You love him.  
  
               You kiss his cheek, brush your lips against him, moving down to kiss the corner of his mouth. The two of you move to sit up, and he curls up in your arms, clinging to you.  
  
               “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He sobs, burying his face in your chest, and you know now that things will be okay for now. You gently rock the two of you, your body sore and bleeding, his skin heated and hurting. But you know, you know this will be okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It is finished. Finally.


End file.
